{"id":3742,"date":"2015-05-07T18:18:39","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T18:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=3742"},"modified":"2015-05-07T18:18:39","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T18:18:39","slug":"death-row-briton-saddened-by-executions-skynews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=3742","title":{"rendered":"Death Row Briton ‘Saddened’ By Executions (SkyNews)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A British drugs smuggler facing the death penalty in Indonesia has said she is “deeply saddened” at the deaths of two Australians executed in Indonesia.<\/p>\n

Lindsay Sandiford, 58, said her fellow inmates were reformed men who had “touched the lives of a great many people after helping to rehabilitate prisoners”.<\/p>\n

Myuran Sukumaran, 33, and Andrew Chan, 31,\u00a0were killed by firing squad in Besi prison on the island of Nusakambangan<\/a> despite pleas for clemency from the Australian government.<\/p>\n

The men were ringleaders of a group of seven other Australians arrested in 2005 for attempting to smuggle 8.2kg of heroin out of Indonesia to Australia.<\/p>\n

The other seven members of the so-called “Bali Nine” are serving either life or 20 years in prison.<\/p>\n

In a statement issued from Kerobokan Prison in Bali through her lawyer, Sandiford said: “I am deeply saddened to learn that Myuran Sukumaran and my dear friend Andrew Chan have been executed.<\/p>\n

“Many things have been said about whether Andrew and Myuran deserved to die for their crimes. The Andrew and Myuran I knew were men who did good and touched the lives of a great many people, including myself.”<\/p>\n

Sandiford, a grandmother from Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, was arrested in 2012 after customs officers found 4.8kg of cocaine in her luggage when she arrived at Bali airport.<\/p>\n

She has always protested her innocence maintaining she was forced to transport the drugs under duress because her children had been threatened.<\/p>\n

She said Chan was a “close friend and confidante” when they were in Kerobokan prison together.<\/p>\n

“He counselled and helped me through exceptionally difficult times after I was sentenced to death in 2013,” she said. “Myuran and Andrew used their time in Kerobokan to make life better for everyone around them.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A British drugs smuggler facing the death penalty in Indonesia has said she is “deeply saddened” at the deaths of two Australians executed in Indonesia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3742"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}